An event that has the potential to change the political landscape of
South Africa, like Marikana has done on the industrial plane, was
quietly marked in the founding of a new political party, the Workers and
Socialist Party (WASP) this week-end. The Democratic Socialist Movement,
affiliate of the Committee for a Workers International and
representatives of strike committees of Bokoni Platinum in Limpopo,
Royal Bafokeng and Murray and Roberts in Rustenburg, North West and KDC
in Carltonville, Gauteng founded the party. This took place despite
seemingly unrelated but more than likely to be deliberate acts of
sabotage in the form of the withdrawal of the permission hours after it
was granted to hold the rally at a stadium in Limpopo, the draconian
bail conditions of leaders of the Bokoni Platinum strike committee and
the shunning of the event by the media.

Despite suffering these setbacks in planning what was meant to be a
rally and media conference to announce the intention to launch the party
and to celebrate the release on bail of key leaders of the Bokoni
Platinum Strike Committee leaders, the representatives who could make it
there on their own after the rally was called off were undeterred and
determined to proceed with what had to be pared down to a founding
meeting of the Workers and Socialist Party. What especially lifted the
spirit of those gathered was the reading out of some of the messages of
support from Harmony Gold, Anglo Gold Ashanti and sister organisations
of the DSM in Nigeria, Venezuela, China and others including of the sole
member of the Irish Socialist Party in the European Parliament, Paul
Murphy.

The need for such a party was clearly evident in the reports given by
strike committee leaders of the situation that exists at various mines
around the country after the return to work. At Bokoni Platinum a
virtual state of emergency has been imposed and workers found not be at
work in the surrounding villages are frog marched to report for duty at
the mine. At Harmony Gold, workers have resumed strike action and
elsewhere discontent is simmering just below the surface as many of the
demands for which workers came out on strike as far back August, at the
huge cost of lost income and in the lives sacrificed on the koppies of
Marikana and surrounding areas remain unresolved and unmet.

Despite the modest founding of the Workers and Socialist Part with just
20 delegates present, it has made concrete the idea of an alternative
based on a socialist programme committed to nationalisation of the
commanding heights of the economy of which the mining industry remains a
key component. The WASP will have to put as one of its key demands the
nationalisation of the mines under the direct ownership, management and
control of workers in the process leading to the socialist
transformation of society which is the only basis on which a lasting
solution to the problems of mine workers and working class as a whole
can be found. The historic first step in the process towards the launch
of what until this time has been referred to as a mass workers party
will build the strike committees as the first battalion in the struggle
to unite workers in the mines, factories and farms, communities and
students into a formidable force that will tie the historical knot
between the events at Marikana and those at Sharpeville on 21st March
2013.

The WASP will have to distinguish itself from all other political
parties by its clearly socialist programme, its approach to electoral
politics as but one terrain of struggle and by its public
representatives being subject to the right of immediate recall and to a
workers wage. It will demonstrate the irrelevance of the ANC conference
where candidates contesting for leadership are all committed to
the preservation of the enslavement of the working class under
capitalism - the very system WASP is dedicated to abolishing

In the coming days and months leading to its launch the WASP will
mobilise support for the party with a resolution calling for the
building of the party to popularise the idea of an alternative in
organised formations such as unions, community organisations, social
movements and like-minded political organisations who will be invited to
adopt the resolution as part of their formal affiliation to the WASP.
The WASP will be fighting party that will unite service delivery
protests, student struggles against unaffordable tuition fees and
workplace struggles against short time, retrenchments and labour
broking. As part of the mobilisation for the launch, WASP militants will
fan out across the country to amass a million signatures in preparation
for contesting the 2014 elections. WASP will also lead a campaign for
the recall of all incompetent and corrupt councillors to replace them
with WASP representatives - workers representatives on a workers wage.
WASP will put its full weight behind campaigns against corruption and
e-tolling.

A series of regional rallies to report on the adoption of the resolution
spelling out the broad outlines of what will be in the programme of WASP
will culminate in the launch of the party on Sharpeville Day as part of
the strategy to register what will be unapologetically a Workers and
Socialist Party.